By Karisa King :
July 17, 2013
: Updated: July 18, 2013 6:51am

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An Air Force lieutenant who faced criminal charges after he came forward as a sexual-assault victim was sentenced to 15 months in a military brig and dismissal from service.

The sentence came late Tuesday after 1st Lt. Adam Cohen pleaded guilty to charges that he harassed friends of the man he accused as his attacker, in addition to wire fraud and several counts of fraternization stemming from relationships with service members in his earlier sex life.

Advocates decried Cohen's prosecution as retaliation for coming forward as a victim. He faced a maximum 107 years in prison and the possibility of confronting in the courtroom the soldier he accused.

The sentence was consistent with a pretrial agreement that capped his confinement at 15 months.

Cohen's special victim's counsel, Maj. John Bellflower, said prosecutors' decision to enter a pretrial agreement raised questions about the strength of the government's case, which he said was fraught with violations of Cohen's constitutional rights.

The investigating officer who oversaw Cohen's evidentiary hearing wrote in a document obtained by the Express-News that investigators charged with pursuing his sexual-assault claim had opened a separate case against Cohen but continued to interview him as the victim without advising him of his rights.

The investigating officer identified that failure as a legal lapse that could prevent prosecutors from using Cohen's statements at trial.

Bellflower contends investigators intentionally used interviews with Cohen as the victim to build the case against him while allowing the statute of limitations in the assault case to expire.

“That's like the Keystone Kops. It's ridiculous,” Bellflower said.

The sentencing concludes a highly contentious case that has drawn condemnation from advocates who worry that it will stoke victims' fears about the consequences of reporting sexual assault.

Cohen's case was featured in a recent Express-News series, “Twice Betrayed,” which detailed examples of troops who were not allowed to transfer from their bases even though they felt threatened after reporting sexual assaults.

Two U.S. senators — Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. — have made inquiries about Cohen's case, which coincides with highly publicized efforts to encourage victims to come forward.

The scandal of sexual assault in the military, in which many victims say they face reprisals while perpetrators go unpunished, has sparked attempts by lawmakers to remove the long-held legal power of commanders over sex crimes cases.

That effort gained steam Tuesday with the announcement that two conservative Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, planned to back a proposal from Gillibrand that would shift control over sexual-assault cases from commanders to military prosecutors.

In Cohen's case, a government spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Linell Letendre, said the Air Force properly handled his sexual-assault report and the decision to prosecute him.

She said Cohen did not file an unrestricted report of sexual assault until July 2012 — about nine months after Cohen said he disclosed the attack along with threatening emails from the man he accused and his friends.

As soon as Cohen reported the assault, Letendre said investigators properly sent the case to the Army, which had jurisdiction over the accused soldier. In the process of investigating the threats, she said Air Force investigators discovered Cohen had created them by hacking into email accounts.

“Those crimes we took very seriously and started investigating, and what was found was that those very same emails and texts that he brought forward are actually the things that he pleaded guilty to creating,” she said.

Bellflower said the magnitude of the charges against Cohen, and the daunting possibility of watching his attacker point a finger at him from the witness stand, compelled Cohen to plead guilty.

“He really had no choice,” Bellflower said. “The government has all the power here.”

Cohen was behind bars Wednesday and unable to comment.

Bellflower predicted the outcome of the case would prevent victims of sexual assault from coming forward, a major problem that spans every branch of the armed services.

A recent Pentagon survey shows that only one in 10 victims reports sex crimes in the military. Pentagon studies also show that 50 percent of victims of unwanted sexual contact said they remain silent because they believed nothing would be done.

“You can look at this story and say Adam Cohen lost here today, but I think victims lost here as well,” Bellflower said.

“If they've got some kind of problem, be it criminal or not, they're going to be less likely to come forward because they've seen the tables were turned on another airman, and now he's rotting in prison for 15 months.”